If you don’t already know how to manage stress or how to reduce
stress triggers in your life, it can have a major impact on your health,
whether you realize it or not.
You may not think that your stress level is bad enough to cause
health problems, but don’t underestimate it because stress is a “sneaky”
thing.
Below are the different ways that stress can affect your overall health.
Reproductive Issues – Stress has the ability to affect the hormone levels in both men and women.
For women, this can cause problems with their menstrual cycles, which
affects their chances of getting pregnant. For men, this can cause
sexual disorders such as impotency and others.
Digestive Disorders – As you probably already know, stress has been found to cause ulcers, which are ultimately caused by bacteria.
However, stress does still encourage ulcers to develop because when
one is under a lot of stress, he or she will generally catch a bacterial
infection easier than someone who is not.
There are other digestive disorders that can be caused by stress as
well. These include irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea, constipation,
stomach pain and more.
Stress can cause our bodies to go into “fight or flight” mode, which
can cause our bodies to temporarily turn our digestive organs “off.”
This will naturally lead to digestive disorders if it occurs often.
Upper Respiratory Problems – Many experts believe that stress weakens our immune system by decreasing the immune responses.
When this happens, your immune system will be suppressed which will
make you susceptible to a wide variety of health problems such as
influenza, colds and infections.
Weight Variations – As previously mentioned, stress
affects hormone levels in the body. One of those hormones is cortisol
(the stress hormone). This hormone directly affects your metabolism,
which will affect your weight.
Some people lose weight while others gain weight when stressed out on
a regular basis. Regardless of whether you gain weight or lose weight,
neither is good for you.
However, gaining weight is generally worse as it can lead to joint problems, diabetes, heart disease and sometimes, even cancer.
Increased Anxiety - When you are under constant
amounts of stress, it can cause a wide variety of anxiety problems. For
example, you may begin to exhibit obsessive compulsive tendencies, worry
excessively, have panic attacks and many other anxiety issues.
Heart Disease – As previously mentioned, stress can
cause your body to go into the “fight or flight” mode, which directly
impacts the heart as it causes it to become more stressed. When this
happens often, it can lead to heart disease.
It is an undeniable fact that stress has an impact on people and
their lives. The problem is that many people don’t realize how stress
can affect them.
To protect your health and mental well-being you need to learn how to
manage stress better, and to start implementing the changes in your
lifestyle that can naturally reduce stress and its triggers in your
life.
You can find many natural stress management techniques if you search
online, and if you invest in a quality self help how to book you are
sure to make some great improvements toward reducing your every day
stress and being much more happy.